TALKING POLITICS

The Chicago metro area encompasses more than 1,000 cities, school districts and other local governments. Recently, a group of local civic organizations gathered for some useful hand-wringing over what we have wrought governmentally-and how it can lead us into the next millennium.

Rather than muse about more utopian approaches that have been adopted in smaller, more homogeneous regions like Indianapolis (consolidation), Minneapolis-St. Paul (tax sharing) or Portland, Ore. (stringent growth management), these civic groups should explore strategic change that is sensitive to the "Where's mine?" political culture of our fractious, yet dynamic region.

Every decade, the metropolitan area grows a new ring about five miles farther out onto the suburban frontier. As homeowners fill this expanse, a game of musical households ensues throughout the older rings, with less expensive housing opening up along the inner ring of close-in older suburbs.

The inner ring-a term you'll see more often-is now more like Chicago than it is the other suburbs. Indeed, House Speaker Michael Madigan regained control of his chamber this year by retaking several south suburban districts that have changed demographically.

Clearly, battles for political control in Illinois will be fought along this expanding inner ring, which can prove either constructive or destructive. If one party tries to torpedo attractive initiatives by the other, as I fear, rather than mount its own case for political support, then everybody loses.

Fragmentation and the large number of governments are less important issues for the region than the capacity of the region to act decisively to provide infrastructure and a high quality of life and create a skilled workforce adequate to demand.

There are other challenges: Sprawl is expensive to maintain; the western suburbs have plenty of jobs and too little affordable housing, while it's the reverse in the south suburbs; getting to jobs is a big problem for many low-skill residents.

The civic groups should assess the amount of intergovernmental cooperation already going on in the region.

The best recent illustration of regional cooperation is the bare-knuckles imposition of Chicago public school reform. A GOP governor and suburban lawmakers forced on the city what Mayor Daley wanted but couldn't accomplish on his own.

The biggest obstacles to regional collaboration lie in the suspicions and parochialism of all the state's major political leaders. It's a shame they can't sit down every so often over bourbon and branch water and ask what the other needs that is good for everybody in the long run. If the civic leaders could do anything useful, it would be to knock some heads together.

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A former Illinois legislator and state agency director, James D. Nowlan is a senior fellow at the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs.